Wednesday, November 11, 2009

Broke in Vegas? How cliché!

I mentioned that we went to Vegas. On Sunday, our debit cards started arguing with us. It all started when we were at the half-price ticket place to get tickets for Blue Man Group, which I will write about later. After a weekend of reckless spending, my debit card was declined. Twice. So, I went off to call the bank to leave Mike to try his. Turns out I can't get through to my bank on Sundays. I could have if I'd had a lost or stolen card, but a declined card? Sucks to be me.

All hope was not lost. We had plenty of cash on us to get us through the next day when I could talk to the bank and say "um???". And we have another bank account we could get some out of, but like I said, we had plenty.

We tried it again after lunch, and no problem. No problem for the rest of the day. Then at dinner, the card went through as a gift card and left us with an $18 balance. VERY bizarre.

Well, in Vegas, "plenty" is a relative term. On our way to breakfast, I tried the atm. No joy. I called the toll-free number on the back of my card and was put on perma-hold. I called MY branch of Homestreet Bank and Gina jumped RIGHT in. So, even though I can't talk to anyone on the weekend, the branch makes up for it. She said that we have a $2500/day limit and sometimes Friday, Saturday and Sunday hit all at once and bam! No, we did NOT spend $2500 in Vegas...we did pay for the trip and the hold at the hotel and a couple of things for the house. So, bam!

She said it should clear by 10 a.m., so to try the ATM again after that. We went and had breakfast. (The mini-buffet at the Venetian is AWESOME by the way. There aren't a lot of things, but the things that are there are phenomenal.) We made our way back to the ATM. No joy. Although this time it didn't tell me I had exceeded my daily limit, it just said no.

So, we went to the room and packed up...then we headed down to the packaging center to send a few things home. The card was declined AGAIN. Well, there went the rest of our cash, eh? So, I tried my other debit card for the other bank. The ATM gave me the same message about having exceeded my daily limit, which was amusing given that we hadn't used it in 3 weeks. At this point, I decided that the Venetian ATMs were just friggin' grumpy.

At this point, we'd checked out and I was desperate for my morning fix of Starbucks black iced tea, no water, no sweetener. I have a Starbucks card which is refilled automatically just so I always have the means to feed my addiction. So we're off to Treasure Island across the street. The Venetian/Palazzo complex has no Starbucks. The ONLY thing that gives them less than 5 stars in my book.

But I forgot. Not only does that Starbucks charge $5 for 20 ounces of iced tea (I kid you not), they don't honor Starbucks cards. Luckily, we'd stocked up on quarters for our penny press activities, so we were able to scrape enough together for my fix. I'd also gotten a call back from Gina and she said had called the corporate office and it was just running slow today. She asked me to try it again. So we find an ATM at Treasure Island. SUCCESS!

So, we were sans cash for a few minutes and our ride to the airport was already paid for. Annoying at worst, but so cliché.